ANNAPOLIS | Republicans hoping to pick up an open U.S. Senate seat in deep blue Maryland have the most competitive candidate they’ve fielded for decades.
But former Gov. Larry Mr. Hogan will need more than GOP support to overcome sustained outrage about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down constitutional protections for abortion.
With Maryland voters set to decide whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution in November, it may be harder for Mr. Hogan to reassemble the bipartisan coalition that elected him to the governor’s office in 2014 and kept him there four years later.
His task was laid out vividly by Lynn Johnson Langer, a Democrat walking to lunch in downtown Annapolis several days after Mr. Hogan announced his Senate bid. Mr. Hogan is likable enough to have won her vote in his second campaign for governor, but the stakes are too high for her to support handing Republicans another win in a closely divided Senate.
“We need more Democrats, so, sorry Hogan,” Mr. Langer said. ”I don’t think he’s a bad guy. Like I said, I don’t always agree with him. In fact, a lot I don’t agree with him.”
Mr. Hogan’s decision to veto legislation to expand abortion access in Maryland in 2022 lingers with voters like Langer. She supports abortion rights unequivocally and said she probably will back a candidate who doesn’t hedge.
Mr. Hogan has said he does not support taking abortion rights away, even though he personally opposes abortion.
However, as governor, he vetoed legislation to end a restriction that only physicians provide abortions. When his veto was overridden by Democrats who control the Legislature, he used the power of his office to block funding set aside to support training non-physicians to perform them.
Abortion already is protected in Maryland law, but Democrats who control the Legislature voted last year to put a state constitutional amendment before voters. In doing so they were following a proven political formula used successfully by several states in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision.
“This is an issue the Democrats care about, and this is a big thing about Maryland: It doesn’t matter how popular you are with your base, and it doesn’t matter how popular you are among independents, the path to the Senate in Maryland goes through the Democratic Party,” said Mileah Kromer, an associate professor of political science at Goucher College who has written a book about Mr. Hogan. “You need Democratic votes to win, and that’s just the math of the state.”
Mr. Hogan attracted national attention during his tenure as governor as one of the rare Republicans willing to criticize Donald Trump, who appointed three conservative justices that created the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Now, Mr. Hogan could be on the same ballot as the former president, who is favored to win the Republican nomination but is deeply unpopular in Maryland.
Mary Kfoury, a Democrat who lives in Edgewater, praised Mr. Hogan for speaking out against Mr. Trump, though that’s not enough to get her vote.
“I really don’t think we can afford to have a Republican,” Ms. Kfoury said. “I want to keep Maryland as blue as possible, especially with things as close as they are, but I think if we had to have a Republican in the Senate he would be a terrific person to have, because he truly states what he thinks and he’s for more traditional Republican values and has bravely spoken against Trump.”
While Ms. Kromer describes Mr. Hogan’s Senate candidacy as “an uphill battle,” she said it would be wrong to dismiss a candidate who consistently maintained high approval ratings during his eight years as governor, despite the 2-1 advantage Democrats hold over Republicans in the state.
“For me, it’s not just that Hogan was popular, it was that Hogan was persistently popular for eight years,” said Ms. Kromer, who wrote “Blue State Republican: How Larry Hogan Won Where Republicans Lose and Lessons for a Future GOP.”
A Republican has not won a U.S. Senate election in Maryland since 1980.
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